There was a time when late-night television was not simply a rote routine of standup-funny guest-musical spot-comedy skit-serious guest (time permitting), but an unpredictable mix out of the heads of some serious and seriously funny people. Those were the days of Jack Paar and then Steve Allen. Allen loved to take his show out of the studio and into the streets, which were (if I recall rightly) Vine and La Mirada. La Mirada was the side street, much less traveled than Vine, and hence the scene of many a stunt. One night Allen appeared in a suit to which a thousand teabags had been sewn. He then mounted a ladder and dived into a great transparent tank of warm water and swam around, streaming tea behind him with every stroke.

That was a tea party, and entertaining, too. Last week’s carefully orchestrated spontaneous outbursts by a coalition of the uninformed and the frustrated, not so much.

I listened to some news reports on the events, which included the usual number of sound-bites from various participants, explaining why they were there. Virtually every statement offered in the form of a fact was wrong, but without exception it was delivered in a tone of righteous victimhood. It was a thoroughly unedifying undertaking, notably so even for the rump of the once and justly proud Republican Party. But after more than a decade of systematically pushing persons of moderate views and temperate character out of the party, the remainder is reduced to the most abject sort of rabble-rousing in order to get a few moments of television air time.

The “tea parties” reminded many observers of some of the street-theatrical antics of the Vietnam War protest movement. That seems a fair comparison, except that, there again, those older shows were often presented with a certain amount of wit or slyness.

Did you ever notice that the long, unkempt hair that identified the male protesters in the ‘60s gradually, over the decades, has worked its way down the social ladder, so that today it is most characteristic of the white underclass and red-state deadenders? That is to say, the very same sort of people who used to take such vocal pride in having beaten up a hippie? Around where I live, that look is now mostly associated with meth labs out in the countryside.

Just so, it would seem,with this media-conscious political movement. The theater of protest has moved downmarket and in the process has become banal and confused. The organizers, some of whom are more likely to be indicted than elected, are said to have used the Internet to bring out the troops. This is evidently meant to suggest that they have moved into the same century as the rest of us and, by virtue of technology alone, can now resume a leading role in our national life. But figuring out how to use a series of pipes to whip up petty resentments is not quite the same thing as rebuilding a political party on a firm foundation of principle. Not even close.